


Rainbow's End - Book Two

by Vee



Series: Rainbow's End [2]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hipsters, Alternate Universe - Hollywood, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2013-11-12
Packaged: 2017-12-29 19:13:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1009035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vee/pseuds/Vee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Production on Red Line begins in London, and the Generation of Miracles is brought together for the first time in years. Under the auspices of Akashi and some unlikely creative contributors, truth behind the most notorious falling out in Hollywood's recent history starts to be revealed. Kagami, of course, is at the center of it all, whether he wants to be or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Akashi sits each of the Generation of Miracles down, one by one in front of a plain white background in a plain white room, sterile like a doctor’s office, empty like the pop culture version of purgatory. He’s sitting across from them on a stool, legs crossed, holding a palm-sized digital camcorder.

“Week one,” he says as Kise Ryouta walks in, looking flawlessly unrefined in his early morning accidental fashion. He came from the Starbucks on Baker Street. He’s looking more somber than he seems in the magazines and on Oprah. Kise sits down. I’m sitting behind Akashi and I can see the playback of the recording in the viewfinder. Kise adjusts his scarf. “What do you want?”

They’ve been asked to think about the question. They’re going to be asked it several more times, in a few different circumstances, but always with a camera pointed right at them.

Kise nods subtly, as if to himself, and looks right at the camera. “Validation.”

Akashi is not a psychologist. He is not there to talk about the answers with them. He just stops recording and shuts the little flap that holds the viewfinder. “Okay,” he tells Kise, and Kise leaves.

Murasakibara enters dragging his feet slightly. He falls heavily into the chair and shakes a hand through his shaggy hair.

“What do you want?”

“I don’t want to be here.”

“Okay.”

A few trailing feathers from Midorima’s as-yet-unfinished tattoo of an eldritch bird creature lick up to his neck. He looks skinnier. His glasses haven’t changed. He stares at his hands, first, when he sits down, and then flicks his eyes up at Akashi as if suddenly remembering where he is. He’s on edge. It stands to reason, considering his current lifestyle. He _is_ the edge, is what he would say if I told him so. He might even do so in third person, just like that.

“The camera,” Akashi prompts him softly, almost tenderly. Midorima’s eyes shift. “What do you want?”

He answers with a chilling deadpan voice. “I want to become a being of pure consciousness.”

It would be pretentious if it weren’t for that tone of voice.  

Akashi thanks him, and Midorima leaves. I notice that he doesn’t thank any of the others.

Kuroko is next. He steps inside and greets us both, nodding and then taking his seat politely. He’s wearing a button-up shirt, which indicates to me that he dressed up for the occasion. I don’t actually look at the viewfinder while Kuroko is being filmed. I don’t know why. It makes me nervous for him. The tension between him and Akashi made me sick the first time I felt it, and now in the little room that feels and looks like purgatory it’s even worse. “Hello,” Kuroko says.

“Hello,” Akashi replies. “What do you want?”

Kuroko pauses for a beat. “I don’t understand the question.”

I look back over quickly, but take pains not to make a noise, not even a slight indication that I’m still there. I hold my breath and I swear Akashi’s hand tightens on the camcorder. “It’s a very simple question.”

“Is it?”

The little breath that Akashi lets out sounds dangerously and frighteningly close to a laugh. “Do you need more time to think about it?”

“Maybe.”

They are silent.

“May I go?”

Akashi’s head tilts in a way that I’m probably supposed to think was intended to be imperceptible. “Yes.”

Kuroko leaves.

In slow motion, or maybe I’m supposed to think so, Akashi uncrosses his legs and turns around. “Taiga,” he addresses me breezily. “Will you answer for Daiki?”

He turns the camera on me. I’m not prepared, but I don’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me flinch. “Why would I answer for him?”

Akashi fixes me with a look that’s every bit as respectful of my intelligence as it is chastising my insult to his. There’s a charred point to that look, and it’s what presses me forward. I sigh and lean further over my knees. “If I were Aomine…” He doesn’t correct me and tell me to look at the camera. “I’d say I want you to go to Hell.”

Akashi closes the flap on the camera. It stops recording automatically.


	2. Who is Kagami Taiga?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mostly wrote this before I even left for vacation, but I added the last section and cleaned it up today, so ta-daaaa! For all of you who are following the premier Kuroko no Basket Hollywood prodigies Hipster Coffeehouse A/U *shrugs madly what even is this fic anymore???* I had some revelations about the plot of Book Two today on the way to work, too, so wheeee-owww yeah I'm pumped.

It turns out that if you’re American, you don’t get to complain about rain in London. I found that out on the seventh day, after Akashi flew us in, before the meetings started. Aomine showed up at Heathrow in the middle of the night and called my international cell phone, advising me to pick him up. He flew in on his own dime. He said he missed us. After driving him to the hotel and letting him sleep for approximately fourteen hours, the three of us—Aomine, Kuroko, and I, determined to start drinking like the locals.

It is not advisable to try drinking like the locals. Not if you are an American in London.   

Aomine was seven beers in when he got into a shouting match with a London native about the weather. For effect, I will stress again that Aomine got into a shouting match that almost came to blows _about the weather._

I pulled him away, Kuroko apologized profusely, we were ridiculed a little as we left, and on the pavement Aomine informed me: “Take me back to the hotel, I want to fuck.”

“Ha ha ha. Nope.” Instead I put his drunk ass to bed again, and made a few phone calls.

Akashi sounded less than pleased that Aomine Daiki had shown up unexpectedly, but as the conversation steered on and we went over the next week’s itinerary of meetings, he seemed to be calculating behind every word. Finally, near the end of the call, he said, “Taiga. Ask if Daiki would be interested in accompanying you to my flat next Thursday. I’m certain his allies will outnumber his enemies. Ryouta will also be in town at that point.”

“I’ll ask about it, yeah.”

“Oh, and Taiga?”

“Yes.”

“You’re certain that the credit is suitable? The press release goes out tomorrow.”

“It’s fine.”

Akashi paused for a beat. “Well, then. Goodbye.”

He hung up before I responded.

Co-creator. I hadn’t wanted a hyphenated credit. But that was more an aesthetic thing.

Next Thurday night, Akashi was wearing reading glasses when we arrived at his flat. Kuroko insisted on bringing a bottle of wine, which I sneered at, calling it a peace offering. Akashi accepted it with a polite, soft, expectedly detached “thank you” at the door, cradling it lovingly to inspect the label. I was jealous, I had to admit, of the way he was able to look at Kuroko straight on, without tilting his head at all. “Please come in, Tetsuya.”

He was very careful to not address me, nor Aomine, and certainly not to invite us in directly. I wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that we hadn’t brought gifts. “Probably,” Kuroko told me later, and Aomine snorted and said he should have jerked off into a bottle of Rumchata and handed it over.

Kise Ryouta was the breathtaking one of the evening in his tight grey sweater and tighter white trousers. He was aware of Aomine’s involvement with me, and still hadn’t reached what could be explicitly called reconciliation with him. About this, Aomine had been quite vocal. They circled one another, chins tilting and eyes dancing at the idea of who would say the first word. Smoldering wasn’t even a proper description of the interaction. I almost excused myself to the balcony, even if it was freezing outside, just to catch my breath after watching them for thirty seconds. I stood with Kuroko and helped myself to a beer, listening as Kise finally spoke first. “Have you forgiven me?”

He was being soft about it, trying to be diplomatic, but I could hear the bite of superiority in the words. Kise Ryouta was being credited as Writer. That hadn’t been sitting well with Aomine at all.

“I have another New York Times Bestseller, Kise, I don’t need to forgive you for shit.”

There was a pause, and without looking over I heard the glug of liquor being poured before Kise noted, “You’re not wasting time with the whiskey, are you?”

“It’s Akashi’s and it probably costs more than the flight over here; you’re damn right I’m not.”

At that, I glanced over, unable to help snickering in the way I’d gotten used to since mostly co-habiting with Aomine. Kise was looking right at _me_ when he said, “You look good, Aominecchi,” and ran one finger up Aomine’s back.

Aomine’s gaze turned to him, one hand clutching his whiskey glass and the other shoved into his pants pocket. A defensive stance from Aomine if I’d ever seen one. “No. I haven’t forgiven you.”

Kise looked him up and down quickly, and half-smiled. “Congratulations on the book,” he said. I couldn’t tell whether it was sincere or not, and then he added, “I haven’t read it.”

For some reason, my eyes wandered the room to find Akashi. He remained standing near the door, holding Kuroko’s wine bottle, observing the interaction between Aomine and Kise with disquieting stillness and a cruel little smirk. When his eyes flicked over at me, I lifted the beer to my mouth and looked down at my boyfriend instead.

“Let’s see if we can find Murasakibara,” Kuroko said, tugging at my sleeve.

We got to talking with Murasakibara about movies – not art house movies, not the sort in the posters framed on the walls of Akashi’s flat – but movies we actually watched or wanted to watch. It was a pleasant conversation, interrupted when a copy of Variety suddenly landed in the middle of our circle, nearly knocking my second beer over. I lifted my hands, exasperated that anyone would have been so careless, but then I looked closer at the paper.

I barely heard Midorima when he said, “So I finally tracked down a copy in Piccadilly Circus. The weather is atrocious outside, Akashi can go on his own damned errand next time.” I was too busy staring at the headline:

**WHO IS KAGAMI TAIGA?**

“What the hell?” I muttered, initially too shocked to react. There was my name, in bold letters on the front page of _the_ preeminent industry paper. It wasn’t even the industry I particularly wanted to be in. “What the _hell_ are they doing, talking about me?”

Kuroko was reading over my shoulder as I gripped the thing tightly. “You’ve been the subject of a lot of curiosity since the press release.”

I snapped my head toward him. “Why? What did the press release say?”

“You didn’t read the press release?”

“No! It didn’t seem important! I already know all that stuff, I’m not vain enough to pore over my own shit!”

“Well,” Aomine appeared behind me and clapped a hand on my shoulder, leaning closer as he did. “Get used to being pretty mindful of everything Akashi has creative control over. You’ll wake up one day and find out the entire world thinks you’re a total asshole, when all you did was—“

“Aomine,” Kuroko warned him.

Aomine sniffed loudly and drew back, but he stayed close enough that I could feel him behind me.

“The press release,” Midorima began as he sat down across from us. He’d taken off his coat but was still wearing a billowy printed scarf tucked around his neck, over a tatty old Misfits shirt. “You’re referred to as a _new creative visionary_. The implication of the whole piece is that you were discovered by Akashi. The subtler implication is a reunion of the Generation of Miracles with you as the crown jewel.” The sneer in his voice must have been too exhausting, because he paused to push his glasses up his nose. It left Kise, leaning against the wall behind Midorima, the opening he needed.

“It really is a brilliant press release. You’d expect everyone to be flipping their shit that I’ve written a television pilot, but somehow everyone’s more concerned about the mystery of who _you_ are.”

Behind me, Aomine sniffed loudly again.

“It would be really interesting if they found out that Tatsuya had so much to do with the story,” Murasakibara said. I glared at him, taking it as a vague threat.

“That won’t happen because Himuro signed over creative ownership of the story in a _contract.”_

Murasakibara shrugged like he didn’t care, and he didn’t.

“Oh, is that the Variety article? Good.” Akashi spoke like the article wasn’t a surprise to him, but I didn’t ask about it. I might have been misinterpreting his tone. He plucked the paper from my hands and sat at the head of the table, reading through it and nodding silently. The rest of us waited, nursing our respective drinks, wondering if that was the reason we were there. Midorima fidgeted, at one point uncurling the scarf from his neck and rolling his shoulders out. Next to me, Kuroko reached beneath the table and slowly, softly, started rubbing my knee.

“Now, then,” Akashi started with a voice that, however soft, managed to catch everyone’s attention. “The press is to have its field day. I can’t enforce this, but the agreement I would like to make here is that we will discuss neither the Generation of Miracles nor Taiga with the press. Under no circumstances are we to make a circus out of our legacy in order to direct attention to this project.”

I bristled slightly at his choice of words. We all knew a circus was going to happen, regardless. Akashi wanted us to let the media say what they would, make their own circus. Surely, everyone else knew that as well.

“That means you, Daiki.”

It was the first moment of the night that legitimately made me feel small and breathless, the way I’d felt the first time I walked into Akashi’s office in his other-worldly Napa Valley mansion.    

Aomine leaned in slowly and set his sweating whiskey glass on the table between me and Kuroko. I heard the rustle of his clothes when he drew back up. “I can leave now,” he said plainly.

“You won’t, though,” Akashi replied, not breaking what I could only assume to be eye contact. Without knowing exactly where to look, my eyes wandered to Midorima, since he was right in my line of sight. He was staring, expressionless, at Akashi. It was the most still he’d been since he re-entered the flat. Kise was pretending not to pay attention to anyone, busy checking his phone. Or maybe he wasn’t pretending at all. Maybe Kise was actually capable of being the one who didn’t care.

“You want a confrontation, is that it? I’m not going to give it to you.” Aomine wasn’t quite striking me as one hundred per cent sure of himself.

“I know that.”

“So why assume you can give me mandates? Order me around when you cut me out of this project on purpose?”

Let me see if I can properly explain Akashi’s expression, here. A director might try forever to get an actor to do something with his face and the muscles of his upper body that even came close to conveying the sort of raw confidence that Akashi had in the next slow moment. His head titled ever-so-slightly and his eyebrows went somewhere inexplicably between a bow of pity and a bow of malevolence. I held my breath. Kuroko’s hand clutched my knee, because he knew I needed to moment of contact to calm my tension on Aomine’s behalf.

The _challenge_ of it was the most incredible thing; the fact that it was so tangible even though it couldn’t be put into words.

“Fuck you,” I heard Aomine sneering the words, hissing them.

“Why did you come here tonight, Daiki?”

“To take a shit in your flat.”

“Charming.” He paused. “You came here because of Taiga. And I respect that. I respect that your presence has helped him remain focused. And Tetsuya…”

Aomine was suddenly snarling. “Don’t you say a word about Tetsuya.”

Akashi closed his eyes momentarily, while my whole face knitted up with confusion. I glanced at Kuroko, who sighed and shook his head like the whole thing was tiring to him. Akashi let out a little laugh and said, “Don’t act like you’re suddenly indignant over _anything._ ”

“After what you did. To him, to all of us, you—“

Snapping out of whatever had been able to let him utter a laugh, Akashi was suddenly more fierce than I’d ever heard him. “ _What I did;_ you’re talking about _what I did_ without considering your own actions, Daiki. Again, _as usual._ You made a gentlemen’s agreement, same as everyone here!”

Kuroko’s voice barely rose up to break through the resulting tension: “Everyone but Kagami.”

My confusion left me reeling, with no idea what to say. The article, the press release, the conversations and animosities flying over my head; I could have been drawn and bound on the table and felt more in control of my own place in the room.

Akashi rolled his head on his shoulders and went on. “My research teams have been dispatched for two months. I should start receiving full reports shortly from the different locations, including Bangkok.”

Midorima took the opportunity to put in his two cents, now that the conversation had finally turned back to business. “The unit in Bangkok will be a small one, but that’s the only way.”

Akashi took over, their announcements flowing naturally as one. “By my rulebook, at least, it’s the only way. We’ll be shooting the Helsinki scenes here, since they’ll mostly be indoors. The London unit will be the largest of course. New York, it’s finally been confirmed, can be shot in New York. The production is quite nearly unprecedented for a television series, but it will be worth it.”

“By _it_ , Akashi means Coppola’s backing,” Midorima said.

“By _it_ ,” Akashi wouldn’t allow Midorima to interpret him. “I mean the media’s interest.”

Conversations went calmly from topic to topic, then. Script meetings, revision schedules, casting, all things Akashi and Midorima seemed to be controlling by puppet strings, the flippant way they spoke of them, sometimes contentious of one another but always confident. I only paid attention, really, for the parts about script meetings. I’d be part of those.

Then, Midorima asked me to be part of the production meetings. I straightened up in my chair, surprised that I could even move, and blinked. “Why?”

“Akashi will have final creative word, of course, on the production itself, but your insight would be appreciated,” Midorima said, and sighed.

“Okay,” I answered. I had no idea what would be expected of me. I had no idea how production meetings worked. My compliance seemed to be enough for Akashi, however, who nodded from his place at the head of the table.

Kuroko told me, after the conversation dried up and the small group started to branch off into duos again, that it was nothing like the old days. I asked him what he meant, smiling just slightly at the thought.

“Though I’m fairly certain Midorima’s picked up a cocaine habit again, and the dice are still in play over who might get laid tonight, there was a lot more debauchery going on whenever parties would happen at Akashi’s house.”

“Were you part of the debauchery?” I asked him, squeezing his shoulder, resisting the urge to add that I fully intended to be the one getting laid tonight.

“I kept to myself. People ignored me.”

“Yeah, that’s hard to believe,” I snorted, and Kuroko elbowed me firmly in the ribs before going on.

“We’ve grown up,” he noted solemnly, looking quickly around the room.

“I don’t think so.”

“Hm?”

“There’s so much growing up to do in this room, it’s pathetic.” I quickly put a palm to my chest and clarified, “Myself included. This whole evening just put it in focus. I can’t believe this group is being trusted with millions of dollars worth of media resources.”

Kuroko drank quietly and slowly from his beer bottle. “People put a very high price on the entertainment of folly,” he said, and I was so stunned by the wisdom of those words that I told him I’d be right back. I wanted to get my jacket; people insisted on walking through the balcony doors so often that a window might as well have been wide open. I also wanted time to comprehend his statement.

Akashi actually intercepted me before I could make it to the coat room. “Hey,” I said, side-stepping him on pure instinct before he collided with me like a bull.

“Shintarou’s boyfriend is back in Los Angeles.”

I narrowed my eyes, wondering what his angle was for telling me, until I realized that Akashi may have just been legitimately bad at small talk. That did little to calm my nerves, but it did make me pity him a bit more.

“I don’t know what you expect me to say.”

“Indefinitely.”

I’m not an anxious person, but I felt my heart beat faster at Akashi’s closeness and what seemed to be an overture of bonding. I shrugged grandly. “So? Do you think they’ll break up? Do you think it’ll hurt production?”

Akashi didn’t actually like to answer questions, when asked directly. I’d started to realize that. “I think his creative output might be enhanced by loneliness. Detachment. He’s very fond of narcotics, as well. His emotions are so interesting.”

My skin crawled at the fact that Akashi sounded so _thoughtful_ about it.

“Where is the coat room?”

His weird mis-matched eyes flicked up at me and he made an odd face. “Second door. Thank you for listening, Taiga.”

“Don’t mention it.” I made it a question, with my tone, totally thrown off by Akashi’s odd outburst of information.

I pushed open the second door into the hallway, expecting to reach inside and retrieve my coat as quickly as possible. It was a little hard to do that, though, since I was greeted by the sight of two bodies engaged in carnal discourse on top of a bed.

“Oh, hey.” Aomine lifted his head from the duvet and looked at me sidelong, as casually as if I’d simply wandered through during a game of checkers. “What’s up?”

Funny (but not really. Not at all) that he should put it that way.

Kise just looked at me, shoulders thrown back and back arched in an artful pose. Finally, he shifted before addressing me. “Are you going to join us, or…?” A pause. “Because that really wouldn’t be a problem.”

It was my own instinct of propriety that forced me to close my eyes, but only after the vision of Kise Ryouta’s naked body balanced gloriously and sexually atop Aomine’s had seared itself into my memory. Fantastic. “This isn’t the coat room,” I realized with a distressed whisper, blood rising to my face.

“You don’t have your coat,” Kuroko noted when I returned.

“I warmed up,” I grumbled, and told him that I wanted to leave.

“Have you forgiven Kise?” I asked Aomine with a biting tone when he finally got back to the hotel suite we were all sharing.

“Only parts of him,” he answered before collapsing face first on the sofa. “I didn’t flush the toilet, Akashi can suck on that,” he added.

He was asleep minutes later. I took his shoes off and got as comfortable as I could, tucked into the cushions next to him, not wanting to disturb Kuroko in the master bedroom. The next morning, Kuroko had placed a blanket over both of us, tucking it up to my chin. It was a far more comforting detail than the five interview requests my new agent forwarded me within the first hour of the day.

Everyone wanted an answer to the question Variety had asked in its headline. The weird part, though, the part that made me feel like a man walking outside of his own skin, leading himself around on a leash, was that I had no idea.

I had no idea who Kagami Taiga was.


End file.
